The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1887-05-13

who would like to loan your son or daugh-
ter bad book. Everywhere, everywhere
IN unclean literature. l charge upon IL
the destruction Of 10000 immortal souls,
and bid you this morning wake up to
the magnitude Of the theme. I shall take
all the worlds literature good novel aud
bad. travels, true and false. histories,
faithful and incorrect, legends. beautiful
and monstrous, all tracts, all chronicles,
all epilogues, all family, city,
State and National libraries-and pile
them up in q pyramid Of literature, and
then shall bring to bear upon 1t some
grand, glorious. infallibie, unmistakablc
principles. God help me to
speak with reference to my last account,
and God help you to listen.
charge you, in the 6rst place, to stand
aloof from all books that give false pict.
ures Of human life. Life is neither =
tragedy nor a farce. Men are not all
either knaves nor heroes. Women are
neither angels nor furies And yet, il
you depended upon much Of the literature
of the day, you would get the idea that
life, instead OF being something earnest,
practical, is a ftful and fan.
tastic and extravagant thing. How poor
ly prepared are that young man and wom-
an for the duties OF to-day who spent last
night wading through brilliant passages
Of magnificent knavery and
wickedness! The man will be looking all
day long for his heroine, in the tin shop,
by the forge, in the factory. In the count
In groom, and he will not find her, and he
will be dissatisfied. A man who gives
himself up to the indiscriminate reading
OF novels will be nerveless, insane, and a
nuisance. H. will be fit neither for the
store, nor the shop, nor the field.
A woman who gives herself up to the
reading of novels will be
untitled for the duties of wife, mother,
sister, daughter. There she is, hair dis.
heyeled, countenance vacant, cheeks pale,
hands trembling, bursting into tears at
midnight over the fate of some I'M
fortunate lover; IN the day time, when
she ought to be busy, staring by the half
hour at nothing; biting her finger nails
into the QUICK. The carpet that was plain
before will be palmer after having wan
dered through a romance o night long
in tesselated halls of castles.
And your Industrious companion
will be more unattractive than
ever now that you have walked
in the romance through parks with plumed
princesses, or lounged in the arbOr
with the polished desperado o, these
novel readersl They are I'M
fitted for this life, which is a tremendous
discipline. They know not how to go
through the furnaces of trial through
which they must pass, and they are UNI
fitted for a world where every thing we
gain we achieve by hard, long-continuing
and exhaustive work.
Again, abstain from all those books
which, while they have some good things
about them, have also an admixture of
evil You have read books that had two
elements in the m-the good and the bad.
W hich stuck to you. The badl The heart
OF must people Is like q sieve, which let's
the small particles of gold fall through,
but keeps the great cinders. Once in
awhile there is mind like loadstone,
which, plunged amid steel and brass fl
lngs, gathers up the steel and repels the
brass. But it is generally just the oppo.
site. II you attempt to plunge through a
fence of burrs to get one blackberry, you
You can not afford to real bad book
however good you are. You say:
1.-THE inf uence is Insignificant"
Il
sometimes produced the lock- jaw. Alas,
if through curiosity, as many do, you pry
into an evil book, your curiosity is as dan.
gerous as that of the man who would take
q torch into gunpowder mill merely to
see whether it would blow up or not.
In menagerie in New York, a man nut
his arm through the bars of black
leopard's cage. The animals hide looked
hat
just stroked it once. The monster se,zel
him, and he drew forth hand, torn and
and Bleeding. o, touch not evi
even with tho :aintest stroke! Though it
may be glossy and beautiful, touch it not,
lest you pull forth your soul torn and
bleeding under the clutch of the black
leopard.
But" you say, show can I find out
whether book is good or bad without
reading itl''
There is always something suspicious
about bad book. l never knew an ex-
ception-something suspicious in the in
dex or style of illustration. This venom
ous reptile always carries warning
rattle.
Again. 1 charge you to stand of from all
those books which corrupt the magma
lion and infame the passions. do not
refer now to that kind Of book which
The villain has under his coat waiting for
The school to get out, and then, looking
beth ways to see that there is no police
man around the block, offers the book to
your son on his way home do not speak
Of that kind Of literature. but that which
svades the law and comes out in polished
style and with acute plot sounds the tocsin
that rouses up all the baser passions Of the
soul. To-day, under the nostrils of this
and, there is a fetid, reeking, unwashed
literature, enough to poison all the fount-
aims Of public virtue, and smite your sons
and daughters as with the wing of de-
stroying angel, and it is time that the
ministers Of the Gospel blew the trumpet
and rallied the forces Of righteousness,
Ill armed to the teeth, in this great battle
against depraved literature
Again, abstain from those books which
IRE apologize Of crime. 1t is sad thing
that some of the best and most beautiful
and some Of the finest
rhetoric, have been brought to make sin
Vice is a horrible thing, any
how. 1t is born in shame, and dies howl
ng in the darkness. In this world it is
with whip of scorpions. but
sfterward the thunders of Gods wrath
pursue it across boundless desert, beat
ng it with rum and woe. When you come
% paint carnality, do not paint it as look
ng from behind embroidered curtains,
through lattice Of royal seragilo but as
IN the agonies Of city hospital.
Cursed be the books that try to make
mpurity decent and crime attractive,
md hypocrisy noble! Cursed be the books
hat swarm with libertines and despera-
loes, who make the brain of the young
people whirl with vlllainy Ye authors
who write them, We publishers who
print them. We booksellers who dis